Once, a few years ago, I hung out with this sort of earth child / moon goddess type . . . a Burner, I guess you might call her (she would call herself that too, and did) . . . but she was real cool anyway. She used to come into my restaurant and sit at the bar and we’d talk about a bunch of dumb crap for hours.

Anyway: She asked me to pick her up one night, so I drove over in the police car and got her. Hell, it was one in the morning. We drank two whole bottles of wine. She was so positive and friendly and uplifting, and talked about how much she loved being in water and laying out in the sun, and on and on. And I in contrast was this sort of death-pale subterranean just-when-you-think-the-world’s-a-joke gloom-freak jerkoff-loser . . . and for some reason that wasn’t absolutely mortifying to her, even though everything I said to her was the complete opposite of her worldview. Maybe that’s why our conversation was so interesting though. I didn’t try to tell her she was wrong, and she didn’t try to tell me I was wrong. It was a nice honest thing. It was genuinely fun.

She called me a few minutes ago saying she “heard” I was in the Bay. Oh boy! I’m totally going to hang out with her. She has no doubt gotten closer to ascending into the clouds . . . and as for me, I have plunged ever deeper into the dark chambers of this terrible endless nightmare, and yet I can still laugh anyway. Maybe our absolutely inscrutable yinyang relationship will endure and be made stronger!!